15 Minutes of Internet Fame

I read other people's journals. Alot. And Sunday, two of the journals I read religiously were featured in a newspaper article in their hometown of New Haven, CT. I thought you guys might like to see what the article had to say about online journals and their creators. Read the article here.

Read the Journal Here:
The Book of Rob - Rob Rummel-Hudson's great journal.
Bobofett - That sassy lass, Dana! (heh)

Would you enjoy your journal being in the limelight? Do you promote your journal? Why, and how? Let's talk shop for a moment, shall we?

Comments

No, I don't promote mine at all.

I've made both of the Honolulu daily newspapers and the Weekly. And although it's not meant to be widespread knowledge at this point, there's even a book being written about mine. A scholarly, sociological study.

And, of course, even right now it's the subject of the usual discussion-by-idiots rant on alt.culture.hawaii.

All basically irrelevant to me. I write mine because I enjoy it and I enjoy looking back years later and see what I was doing and thinking on that day then.

But then I've almost always kept diaries ...

I wrote a little blurb on journals/blogs for the Honolulu Weekly. And some of us were mentioned in a 1999 "Bytemarks" column in The Honolulu Advertiser (and of course, HawaiiStories got profiled in the same column last year).

But boy! Rob and Dana. There's a duo that have benefited from considerably more than "15 minutes" of fame, depending on the size of your universe. It actually would be surprising to me if this is the first profile of the pair. I owe them, too... they were probably the number one draw for the first JournalCon.

Who knows what makes some writers linger in the limelight longer than others. The great Pamela Ribon was the cat's meow for ages, and even took a break to live her life and write a book, and is back and going strong once again. Diane Patterson has gone through a number of major changes (and a number of long breaks) and still retained a strong following.

Yet, there are hundreds of folks who've been doing it longer, if not better, that are content to revel in relative obscurity. Well, mostly content.

Come to think of it, it's been funny reading the conspiracy theories and backbiting today relating to the nebulous "A-List Bloggers," since it's exactly the short of colorful debate that permeated the online journal world five years ago. (Anyone remember the "The Journal Cabal"?)

I do think it's remarkable to read about "online journalers" like Rob and Dana these days, actually, considering the media fad-o-sphere in the tech sector has been all but dominated by bloggers. At least no blogger's made the cover of U.S. News & World Report yet. (Yet.)

Let's hear it for the old skoolers!

P.S. Although I stopped updating it a while ago, I maintained a list of links of mainstream media coverage of the online journal phenomenon. The onset of the blogging revolution, and the blurring of the definitions, is part of what made updating it a futile task.

OmarG of Terribly Happy wrote an article about Austin-based online journals way back in 1999 for the Statesperson. Since I was also working for the paper at the time, he could only use me for background, even though he used Austin Stories (back when it was a 'burb) as a starting point.

A year later, the Austin Chronicle followed suit with its own article, and this time, I was profiled.

The article links to an old URL, which has now turned into a porn site. So I don't get very much traffic from it.

There was a time I wish I had the traffic of Pamie or Patrick, but after Musicwhore.org took off among Japanese music fans, I've let go of that dream.

Nah, I don't promote my site. I'd be lying if I said I didn't think about it, though.

People find me from all sorts of places. "The Honolulu Weekly" still has me up on their site and so does "Out in Honolulu".

Most of my window-shoppers come to me via weird search queries: "sex with boys", "friend watches while having sex", "Japanese gay boys" and of course "Jordan Segundo" are some trendy search strings that have been making my counter go bonkers.

Maybe I should start writing the url in bathroom stalls as well?

Most of my window-shoppers come to me via weird search queries

Those search statistics are amusing ... and puzzling. I have Picosearch on the Tales, just put up a report on recent searches. More than usually puzzling because "firecracker" makes both the found and the not-found lists. And why, as I asked, would anyone search my site for "firecracker"?

Maybe they were looking for references to Cheyne. :)

p.s. How come we have to use "em" for italics here instead of "i"?

Was reminded again today of the pleasure of this diary keeping.

Thanks to the almost incredible survival of my "India Notebooks" and their translation into HTML, I could look back and remember exactly what I was doing THIRTY years ago today.

Yes, it's a habit I highly recommend.

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